Tokyo — The day before Shinzo Abe was assassinated, Tetsuya Yamagami sent a letter saying that the Unification Church had ruined his life.
Yamagami’s mother has been a member of the church for over 20 years and has made huge donations to family opposition. “It’s no exaggeration to say that my experience in the meantime continues to distort my entire life,” he wrote to the blogger who covered the church. Japanese police confirmed that he had sent the letter.
The next day, during a campaign in Nara, Mr Abe was shot dead at close range with an improvised gun.
Police have charged Yamagami with murder for being angry with a “specific group” and have decided to target Prime Minister Abe. Authorities have not named the group, but a spokesman for the Unification Church said Mr Yamagami was likely referring to them. It is unclear why Mr. Yamagami turned Animas to Mr. Abe.
The July 8 shooting pushed the legal issues of the church back into a national dialogue, especially in the fight against families who said they were poor through large donations. These payments were in the billions of dollars in revenue from Japan that helped fund many of the Church’s global political and business ambitions.
In a 2016 ruling, a Tokyo civil court donated church members’ inheritance, salaries, and retirement funds to the group, “saving” him and his ancestors from corruption, and then paid more than $ 270,000 in damages. Gave it.
In another citizen case From 2020, the judge ordered the church and other defendants to pay damages to the woman after members convinced her that her child’s cancer was caused by family sin. On their advice, she spent tens of thousands of dollars on church merchandise and services, including looking up the history of her family and buying blessings.
Last week, church officials said they had agreed with Mr. Yamagami’s family in 2009 to repay 50 million yen (about $ 360,000) in her long-standing donations. In an interview, Mr. Yamagami’s uncle said she had given at least 100 million yen.
According to Hiroshi Watanabe, a lawyer who negotiated several times, many families resolved their complaints against the church through an agreement arbitrated in court.
Details of Shinzo Abe’s assassination
28-year-old Kayodaeri grew up in a family dedicated to the Unification Church.
She said her mother gave the church income from heritage and the sale of their home. She said her family had to squeeze into a small Tokyo apartment decorated with expensive Unification Church books and vases that were thought to bring good luck.
In junior high school, Kayoda said she began to watch her parents’ finances carefully and persuaded her to save money for her car and home. Her mother is now modestly donating. Kayoda accused Abe of shooting, but she said she expected that “many incidents in which her family was destroyed” would draw attention.
Susumu Sato, a spokesman for the Unification Church in Japan, said that while some members encouraged believers to donate excessively, most donors were motivated by their beliefs.
“It seems unthinkable now, but those people believed in God,” said Sato, who feared that church members would become Abe’s death scapegoat.
Rev. Sun Myung Moon founded the Unification Church in South Korea in 1954. Five years later, he opened his first overseas branch in Japan and soon became the church’s largest source of income.
Former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, Prime Minister Abe’s grandfather, appeared at an event hosted by Mr. Moon’s group, which was established to combat communism. Decades later, in 2021, Prime Minister Abe spoke in a video feed to a conference in Seoul hosted by a church-related nonprofit organization, praising “focusing and emphasizing family values.”
An avid Korean nationalist, Moon was educated in Japan while his country was under colonial rule. His theology reflects his ambivalence to Japan, which his sermon describes as both a potential savior and the power of the devil.
During his visit, Mr Moon warned Japanese believers that they were guilty and advised them to sacrifice everything for the church.
“Each of you must recover by compensating for the sins your ancestors have committed in history,” he told a group of believers in 1973, as “blood, sweat, and tears.” I instructed.
Hundreds of thousands listened to his call. By the mid-1980s, billions of dollars had flowed from Japanese families into church funding. Moon used the money to build a vast business empire and a network of nonprofits and media such as The Washington Times, which he used for political influence.
According to a court ruling in a subsequent civil lawsuit against the group, the family made a certain donation and paid a large fee to purchase various religious services and a leather volume of Mr. Moon’s teachings. I was asked to pay.
Church-related companies sometimes used high-pressure sales tactics to raise more money. The court proceedings explain how believers used the ancestral curse warning to sell products such as decorative vases imported from South Korea. The church decided who the believers would marry and sent thousands of people (mainly women) abroad to become spouses of church members.
By the early 1990s, Mr. Moon’s power in Japan had peaked. In 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo member of the religious cult attacked Salingus, causing a backlash against what is known as a new religion in the country. Publish an account where former believers tell everything, Proceedings The mount has started.
The A national network of lawyers who oppose spiritual salesA group that has been crusaders against the church for decades began receiving complaints about the church in the late 1980s. Eventually, it raised more than 34,000 and claimed more than $ 900 million in damages.
As criticism grew, the Unification Church continued to attack, claiming that years of negative attention led to the persecution of its followers. In one case, Toru Goto was imprisoned in an apartment in Tokyo for over 12 years. He tried to get rid of him by his family, according to a civil lawsuit against his parents and others in the city.
Fearing that the Japanese government will do so Revoke its legal statusThe Church has announced new regulations on recruitment and donations.
Since then, the power and influence of the church in Japan, and dissatisfaction with it, have diminished. However, “there are still many people like Mr. Yamagami’s family,” said Yoshifu Arita, who frequently speaks about this issue. “Japanese society does not see them.”
However, Mr. Yamagami did not lose sight of the Unification Church. His mother’s actions “put my brother, my sister, and me into hell,” he wrote on Twitter. account.. The letter sent before Mr Abe’s shooting included the account name.
In anti-Korean beliefs, misleading thoughts about Insel culture, and commentary on Japanese politics, the suspended account was a painful childhood and angry anger at the mother’s loyalty to the Unification Church. Is depicted. He blamed the failure relationship of his life.
Mr. Yamagami was born into a wealthy family, but his father committed suicide at the age of four. Ten years later, his grandfather died suddenly, and no one stopped “the mother who was sending money to the Unification Church,” Yamagami wrote on Twitter.
She “wrapped the whole of our family in it and destroyed herself,” he wrote.
In a letter he sent before the shooting, Mr Yamagami said he had spent years dreaming of revenge, but was convinced that nothing would happen if he attacked the church.
Mr Abe “is not my enemy,” Yamagami wrote. “He is just one of the strongest sympathizers of the Unification Church.”
However, he added, “I can no longer afford to think about the political implications and consequences of Abe’s death.”
